(B) The fear of being moved to a nursing home; (C) The fear of a lingering death. Other fears and concerns reported by seniors include health problems, memory loss, inability to drive a car and loss of transportation and personal mobility, and for good reasons, as these issues impact both lifestyles and quality of life.

Most seniors, 89% want to remain living in their own homes, a trend known as aging in place. The concerns about moving mom or dad to a nursing home play heavily on feelings of guilt with the adult children of seniors.  An overwhelming number of boomers fear that their parent(s) will be sad or may be mistreated in a nursing home.

So here we have an interesting dynamic: seniors want to maintain their independence, but are increasingly relying upon caregiving support from their adult children or outside care providers; boomers in growing numbers, almost 63% of them, are stepping in to provide either physical or financial support for an aging parent.  So what’s the answer to this challenge to provide cost effective levels of supervision and assistance?  It’s modern technology.

About half of all seniors are amenable to using technology to maintain their independence. So you’d expect boomers who have grown up with computers, acquired iPODs, cell phones, Blackberrys and a pervasive Internet to their lives to willingly deploy today’s modern technology for their parents.  But only about 14% of boomers have actually looked to technology for solutions to solving enhancing the aging in place experience.

About 50% of seniors between 65-75 years of age are comfortable with today’s computers and technology. That age group is also more active and generally healthier than their old peers.  Unfortunately, most seniors who could benefit the most from computers, those over 75-years old, have not adopted that technology as an integral part of their lives.  The computer, cell phone, and other similar devices can assist seniors in staying in more constant, closer communications with friends and family, thereby enhancing socialization and quality of life.

Today, there are new technologies that can actually monitor movement, daily activities, medications, falls, even turn off the stove if left on too long or shut off a faucet left running.  Some systems can actually learn a senior’s schedules and activity patterns and be programmed to send an alert to either a central office of an adult child if the sensor picks up a change in pattern, or does not register something like the medicine cabinet being opened up the expected number of times per day for prescription drugs to be consumed.  Of course, it’s not perfect, because the sensors can’t determine how many pills mom or dad actually took, or if he took the correct medicines, but it’s a good start.

Several years ago at the 2005 White House Conference on Aging, there was an exposition held that featured some concepts for the implementation of technologies to allow people to stay in their homes longer and more safely.  Among the many concepts were hot water sensors that kept water temperatures from possible scalding; bathroom alert systems that send a message if the aging senior fails to come out of the shower or bathroom after a prescribed period of time.  Sensors that can determine if a person has fallen and is not moving; sensors that can record the frequency of getting up in the middle of the night or if a person failed to get out of bed in the morning at his or her usual time.

To provide actual visual feedback there are video systems available as stand-alone systems or to augment the sensors placed throughout the home – something often referred to in nursing homes as a “Granny-Cam.”  These can provide one or two way video between aging parents and their adult children, and have been used to have mom or dad actually join the family at meal time for a virtual family dinner, with all the guests seen in real time via web-cam or other video technologies. It’s a great way to stay connected as a family.

As with all newer technologies, innovations for their uses continue to grow, and as they have with HDTV digital televisions, and personal computers before that, prices will continue to come down making their application and uses more pervasive in the homes of those we love and want to protect when we can’t be there.  Technology in aging continues to be a great idea and is increasing in uses to contain costs while enhancing independence and quality of life for our aging seniors.